Considered to be among the world’s best

photographers, David Doubilet, photographer-in-residence for

National Geographic Magazine, will feature his works at Alabama’s

Delta Resource Center in Spanish Fort Thursday and at Spring Hill

College in Mobile Friday.

Doubilet began his underwater photography

career at the age of 12, he said, shooting in black and white.

He said black and white, one of his “great

loves in life,” helped him understand light and in particular

underwater light, which is an entirely distinct photographic

experience with its own nuances.

“Underwater, there is a lot of hidden color,”

he said, noting that once one grasps underwater light in darker

hues, moving on to color is a seamless transition, leading to great

“visual experiences."

As a teenager, Doubilet further explored

underwater havens, photographing along the way, off the Jersey

coast and in the Caribbean around Small Hope Bay, Bahamas.

After graduating from Boston University in

1970, Doubilet traveled the world around, finding himself in

far-flung places of the likes of New Zealand, Tasmania, Scotland,

Japan, the Northwest Atlantic and Northeast Pacific oceans.

In all, he has racked up over 60 photographed

stories for National Geographic.

And he seems to relish

or at least not heed to dangerous assignments.

The Okavango Delta system, the endpoint of the

Okavango River in Botswana, southwest Africa, is a swamp, serving

as the draining grounds for the river.  Yet,

the delta is home to an incredible array of wildlife species, along

with the indigenous Okavango people.

Nile crocodiles, known to easily seize humans,

roam yet Doubilet hunkered down and photographed the milieu in all

its austere magnificence.

“It was beautiful, it was rare and terribly

dangerous,” he said.

He also worked with the late Lt. Commander

Richard Best, the Douglas SBD dive-bomber ace who sunk the Japanese

flagship Akagi with only two wingmen remaining from his exhausted

squadron in the Battle of Midway, June 1942.Best and

Doubilet joined an expedition searching for the underwater remains

of the Pacific Theatre.

He said they used remote controlled craft that

captured photographs of submerged war relics at a depth of 17,000

feet.

Overall, Doubilet said he enjoys assignments

enabling him to capture a string of images that embody a particular

place and time, and which are “interesting, aesthetically pleasing,

(and)…creating an excitement that astounds people."

The underwater realm encompassing 70 percent

of the planet is “fairly new imagery,” he said, since he represents

only the 2^nd generation of undersea photographers.

Yet, the novel art of his canvas - the unseen,

unexplored divine depths - certainly deserves due notice.